The first episode of the new Watson Weekly Friday edition, featuring Rick Watson and Jessica Lesesky, debuts a new format focused on news and commentary related to e-commerce and retail. The new format includes three stories in the “Headline Hangover” section and one main story.

In this episode:

Amazon’s Luxury Nightmare: Why a $475M investment in Saks Global went to zero and why Amazon is calling it “financial malpractice.”

Gap’s Hollywood Move: Gap hires a Paramount heavy hitter as its first Chief Entertainment Officer. Is brand-as-media the future of fashion?

The $63 Billion Ad Leak: New data reveals massive levels of invalid bot traffic across TikTok and LinkedIn.

OpenAI’s Ad Pivot: The “ChatGPT Go” plan is here. Rick and Jess discuss why OpenAI is finally embracing ads to combat their $12B burn rate and what this means for the future of Google Search.

Format Update: Guest interviews are moving to Wednesdays, and our hard-news deep dives will drop every Friday.

The Watson Weekly Friday Edition is sponsored by Mirakl.

Chapters:

0:00 – Introducing: A New Format for the Watson Weekly

1:15 – Headline Hangover: Amazon’s Luxury Disaster

3:42 – Why Amazon is Calling Saks “Worthless”

5:50 – Gap Hires a Chief Entertainment Officer: Genius or Gimmick?

8:15 – The $63 Billion Ad Fraud Problem (TikTok vs. Meta)

11:30 – Main Story: OpenAI Officially Launches Ads

14:05 – ChatGPT Go & The New Sponsored Search

17:20 – OpenAI’s $12B Burn Rate vs. Revenue

20:10 – The Future of AI Search: Will it Kill Google?

22:45 – Closing Thoughts & New Show Schedule

#watsonweekly #openai #advertisingfraud #amazon #saksglobalchapter11 #googlesearch

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